It was no coincidence that Barbarella came out in 1968. In retrospect, that was the perfect year for bringing out a fun, kitsch film that was explicitly erotic from the first scene – a zero-gravity striptease with a floating Jane Fonda, dressed only in the opening credits.

It was a performance that did not perhaps require huge acting skill, but it has gone down in the history of costume, if not the history of cinema.

Forty years after that riot of youth and beauty in deep space, Jane Fonda has suggested a sequel. It wouldn’t be a remake with some another actress, someone young and beautiful (which has been talked about for a while), but a genuine sequel, with the now seventy-odd Barberella in the starring role.

This one would also be sexy, but fun too, like the first one – and would star her alone, one of the best preserved seventy-something international stars (thanks to her fitness regime and, as she has said herself, plastic surgery). As she says, "I think it would be funny — and feminist." Dare we hope?